Sunday, April 20, 2014

The last three weeks have been hell. My dad, who has Parkinson’s Syndrome, has been in steep decline over the last three months. On Monday I took him to a new neurologist. She described his extraordinarily steep decline as unusual and atypical, although she recently had another patient who experienced the same pattern of steep decline.

On Tuesday my dad was hospitalized because he couldn’t move. The hospital staff at Banner Thunderbird in Glendale AZ told me that they couldn’t admit or treat Parkinson’s patients because Medicare doesn’t recognize this as a treatment category for hospitalization. I was furious and told the staff that he had experienced a very precipitous decline over 10 hours and that he needed to be evaluated to determine what was happening. The hospital staff held him for 24 hours before releasing him, leaving me to scramble to find placement for someone now too impaired to live in his assisted living facility.

I would describe my experience at Banner Thunderbird as ORGANIZED, INHUMANE INSANITY. The problem was the system had no way of recognizing or treating the special needs of patients with neurological disorders. Treatment was refused because the disorder of Parkinsons is not recognized as a condition requiring hospitalization, even when patients experience extraordinarily atypical symptoms. I could go on but the experience is still to painful to recount fully.

The unresolved question is why the sudden and unusual decline? I believe it is because of the bio-accumulation of radionuclides from Fukushima.

In the spring of 2011, I spoke to the person who conducts Arizona’s radiation testing. He works for the state lab, not the EPA. They do not release their test results. However, during our conversation he told me he had measured radiation at the level of 50 picocuries a liter in fresh Arizona milk.

In 1962, Harold Knapp described how radioiodine from a single deposition in pasture-land bioaccumulates and biomagnifies, producing substantial and injurious radiation doses for children consuming milk.[i]

Milk is hardly the only source of exposure. If radionuclides were in milk, they were also in food crops grown in the state.

2. Has primary effect on the cells of the neural parenchyma (p. 134), resulting in a breakdown of the blood-brain barrier, among other dysfunctions.

a. The neural parenchyma is the functional tissue in the brain and is distinguished from the stroma, which is the supportive or structural tissue. The parenchyma consists of neurons and glial cells. Interference with glial cells results in a breakdown of the blood-brain barrio (http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-the-brain-parenchyma.htm).

Some of the effects of radiation-induced damage to the neural parenchyma may include the following:

1.) Alterations in the capacity to generate new neurons and loss of existing neurons in the dentate gyrus

2.) Alterations in receptors for learning and memory

3.) Alterations in neuronal signaling

4.) Alterations in oxidative stress

5.) Genetic risk factors (p. 139)

6.) Radiation-induced demyelination (p. 145)

3. Iradiation causes changes in neurotransmitter systems, particularly DOPAMINE, which is a type of catecholamine. Here is a definition from Wikipedia of catecholamine:

Catecholamine is very radio-sensitive (p. 147). The production and uptake of dopamine, as a type of catecholamine, are very radio-sensitive.

Parkinsons is a disease of dopamine dysfunction as the receptors die off. The brain is a radio-sensitive organ and dopamine, as a catecholamine, is particularly affected after irradiation.

I will never be able to prove that Fukushima fallout increased my father’s rate of decline. However, I am very strongly convinced that it did. I believe that increased background radiation, combined with bio-accumulation of radionuclides such as cesium and strontium, increased the neurological rate of decline in my father's brain.

I anticipate the American health care system is going to be overwhelmed and the response is going to be even worse than the organized insanity I experienced this week at Banner Thunderbird in Glendale Arizona.

11 comments:

Oh, Majia, I am so very, very sorry about your father. It is surrealistic, isn't it, what our American Health System really is? Having lived in Europe with Universal Health Care, I am dumbfounded daily at the ignorance and greed of our American system.Yes, I long ago read that radiation attacks the nervous system or lungs first. Neural breakdowns are almost impossible to pinpoint or treat, as I have first-hand experience in learning. After 6-months and $35,000 worth of testing, I was told, "It's a neurological problem". Well, duh, I didn't need to spend a penny—much less $35,000—to figure out that. If it helps any, your father may not be in pain. Of course, I can't know that for sure, but often when some part of the neural network is damaged, the brain, which is the neural mediator, is equally damaged. When I have "episodes" I am strangely peaceful and accepting. In my case, it is because my brain is shutting down, too. Does your father's blood pressure fall? That is a sign the brain has also slowed doen. That is good news for the victim. Again, from first-hand experience, I think it is when the victim is getting the first glimpses of the other side. I think it is the right brain taking over for the loss of the left, and, let me tell you, that right brain is good stuff. It is the direct link to what awaits us.

Majia,So sorry you, your dad and family are being traumatized by the system. Thank you for sharing this experience you never know whom you may help. Hope you find a good, safe place for your dad to be cared for.

I wonder if your father would benefit from one of the micro nutritional supplements that are available now? I have read about them and watched a video from TrueHope Empowerplus. In Canada they are using it in some hospitals for brain damaged persons with good results. I also know several persons who got off psychiatric medication by using it. This might help him combat whatever it is that is weakening his brain function. As a psychotherapist I kept an eye out for these sorts of things as I do not approve of the drugs. I talked to a psychiatrist in Denver some years ago who told me that he was very skeptical but had tried it, and that for some persons it was great. So, I know Parkinson's is not a mental illness but is neurological. Anyway one never knows what will work. Best of luck in helping your dad.

Majia, I'm so sorry to hear about your father. One of the challenges with medicine is cause cannot be pinpointed. Radiation may or may not be the cause of your father's illness and decline - it cannot be proven either way. I experienced a similar challenge to get treatment when my father got very sick and eventually succumbed several years ago. I had to make decisions I wasn't really prepared for.

One thing to watch out for was that my father was not allowed to return to assisted living after he declined. I didn't know they could do that, but essentially they said he couldn't come back home from the hospital near the end - and they had legal means to enforce it. Keep an eye out for that.

One of the important things - I think the important thing for all of us now - is to force ourselves to keep looking forward to the future, not lamenting the lost past. Life is still precious and we need to keep living it, living in the past destroys the life we have left.

About Me

I am a Professor at a large public university. I study political economy and biopolitics (the politics of life). My interests are diverse but are broadly concerned with economic, social and environmental justice. I have published 5 books: Crisis Communication, Liberal Democracy and Ecological Sustainability: The Threat of Financial and Energy Complexes in the Twenty-First Century (2016); Fukusima and the Privatization of Risk (2013); Constructing Autism (2005); Governmentality, Biopower and Everyday Life (2008/2011); Governing Childhood (2010).
I also participated in an edited collection on Fukushima: Fukushima: Dispossession or Denuclearization (2014).